Raise your hand if you survived Earth Day weekend with your mental health intact, or at least undiminished. In the Lone Star State, we just endured a three-day onslaught of unofficial holidays: Santa Maria Juana Day (4/20), San Jacinto Day (a school holiday in my childhood years, commemorating the decisive battle in the War for Texas Independence), and an Earth Day with a case of middle-age existential dread appropriate for a holiday soon to turn 50.

Yesterday's Earth Day celebration at Discovery Green was not fertile ground for a Green Party apparatchik chasing petition signatures. The overwhelming majority of attendees whom I approached told me that they had voted in one of the March primary elections; I didn't ask which primary, but it was a Democrat-heavy crowd, as you might imagine. This phenomenon doesn't occur exclusively because environmentally-minded voters mistake the Democratic Party for a bulwark against industrial pollution and global warming: Plenty of progressive voters voted to support progressive candidates, regardless of their chances of winning—which, as a longtime Green I can respect, whether or not I agree with it. The Sunday Streets event in Third Ward was no better.​============With this week's lefty blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance won't be flying Southwest Airlines for awhile. Not even for five grand in cash and another G in flight vouchers, thanks.

In his weekly roundup of criminal justice news, Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast collates the reports about the undocumented necropolis discovered at the shuttered state prison facility in Fort Bend County:

Here's a postscript to the closure of TDCJ's Central Unit in Sugar Land, which long-time readers will recall was the first prison unit closed in the Lone Star State since the founding of the (Texan) Republic. When Fort Bend ISD began preparing a portion of the sight for a construction project, they began unearthing bodies. Lots of them—22 as of when this Houston Chronicle story was written. These were inmates from the convict leasing era and later who worked for the Imperial Sugar Company as de facto slave labor through the early part of the 20th century. A cemetery on the prison site included only white inmates' remains, which led activist Reginald Moore to believe that black prisoners were buried in unmarked sites elsewhere on the grounds. Turns out, he was right. See related, earlier coverage from Texas Monthly and commentary from Grits. MORE: The number of unmarked graves discovered is now 79!

Dan Solomon at Texas Monthly reports on the the defamation lawsuits threatening the media empire of bombastic Infowars host Alex Jones, and Danny Gallagher at the Dallas Observer sees that Glenn Beck's company is tumbling down around him.

In book releases, Bud Kennedy at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram interviews Lawrence Wright, the author of the acclaimed God Save Texas. And Gregg Barrios at the Texas Observer profiles Jorge Ramos and his manifesto for journalists. Excerpt:

“If Trump was willing to eject a legal immigrant with a U.S. passport and a nationally broadcast television show from a press conference, he would have no problem expelling the more vulnerable immigrants from the country,” Ramos writes in his new book, Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era.

The morning after his ousting, Ramos’ fellow journalists criticized him. Politico’s Marc Caputo said Ramos was “explicitly advocating an agenda. Reporters can do this without being activists.”